Victim's boyfriend gets life in prison for 1982 murder

Brian Roger, Houston Chronicle

By Brian Rogers

Updated 9:01 pm, Thursday, April 25, 2013

Manuel Pena
Investigators with the Harris County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit have solved the 1982 murder of a young woman in northwest Harris County.
Manuel Pena, 63, has been charged with the murder of his then 19-year-old girlfriend, Sherri Strong.
On Wednesday, June 16, 1982, about 3 a.m., Sherri Strong was found dead at a home located at 10731 Hazy Valley in northwest Harris County. Strong's 34-year-old boyfriend at the time, Manuel Pena, reported finding Strong hanging in the garage. After the original investigation was concluded, the case was presented as a homicide to the District Attorney's Office, but criminal charges against Mr. Pena were declined.
Photo: Harris County Sheriff's Office

Manuel Pena
Investigators with the Harris County Sheriff's Office...

Sherri StrongInvestigators with the Harris County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit have solved the 1982 murder of a young woman in northwest Harris County.
Manuel Pena, 63, has been charged with the murder of his then 19-year-old girlfriend, Sherri Strong.
On Wednesday, June 16, 1982, about 3 a.m., Sherri Strong was found dead at a home located at 10731 Hazy Valley in northwest Harris County. Strong's 34-year-old boyfriend at the time, Manuel Pena, reported finding Strong hanging in the garage. After the original investigation was concluded, the case was presented as a homicide to the District Attorney's Office, but criminal charges against Mr. Pena were declined.
Photo: Harris County Sheriff's Office

More than 30 years after strangling his girlfriend and staging her suicide in his garage, Manuel Richard Pena was sentenced Thursday to life in prison for murder.

Pena, 65, was initially investigated in connection with the June 16, 1982, death of Sherri Strong, but was not charged.

The cold case was re-opened in 2011 by Harris County Sheriff's investigators who noted that Pena had compiled a lengthy and violent criminal history since 1982.

Investigators then spent months re-examining all the cases and interviewing people who had been involved. Eventually, they gathered enough witness statements to charge Pena, who was working as a wedding photographer, according to authorities with the sheriff's office.

In 1982, police found 19-year-old Strong dead and nude on the floor of Pena's garage in the 10700 block of Hazy Valley Lane in north Harris County.

Pena told investigators that he awoke in the night to find that she had hanged herself, prosecutor Kari Allen told jurors.

"He had strangled her and made it look like she hung herself in an apparent suicide," Allen said.

Pena cut the body down and called authorities after finding her, defense attorney Shawn McDonald told the jury.

He said Strong had been depressed weeks earlier and had heard a message that night that Pena's ex-wife wanted a reconciliation.

"This wasn't a murder in 1982, and it's not a murder today," McDonald declared.

The jury in state District Judge Brock Thomas' court disagreed, convicting Pena of murder on Wednesday and sentencing him to life Thursday.